


A blur beneath me now

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Series: Disasters in the end, it's like a default [2]
Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 22:12:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9681707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: For Pietro, the world stands still as Wanda falls.It returns to blurring slowness when she hits the tiles with a resoundingthud.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Hester!

**i.**

The world goes very, very still, when James Buchanan Barnes rests his rifle against his shoulder and looses the bullet Nicholas J. Fury entrusted to him and him alone.

Pietro screams, as the bullet rips through the cavernous space, and the Hulk howls his victory as the blue Baron fades into a normal man, no longer a demon.

The Witch laughs, until the bullet, carved and cured until it is deadly even to her, catches in her breastbone.

The red fades from her eyes, and Wanda smiles to Natalya.

“Thank you,” she says, and the vortex collapses. So does she.

**ii.**

It takes an eternity for Wanda to hit the tiled floor beneath her, or perhaps it takes only a moment - Pietro is never sure, and has relied on Wanda for years to help him force time into a straight, steady line. It turns to spaghetti the moment he is away from her, and so, now-

She hits the tiles with a dull thump. There is nothing dramatic or cinematic about it. It feels a thousand times worse just for that.

Somewhere beyond Wanda, the Hulk once more becomes Banner, and Pietro's mind flashes a spare thought away for the doctor, who has been twisted into so many knots of guilt that he will never, ever be free. 

Wanda is unmoving when Pietro reaches her, though, and so the spare thought floats away very much alone.

**iii.**

"Quicksilver," the Widow says, crystalline Petersburg Russian sharp-edged from her soft lips, "let us help."

He shields Wanda from their view as best he can, waiting until he can find the divot and dip where the bullet struck her.

Barnes is good at his job, perhaps as good as Barton - better, for his more modern equipment.

The divot is high on the left of her torso, the dip runs deep, perhaps right to her heart.

The Widow's hand is dirty and alive on Wanda's pale-as-death cheek. Pietro is not sure how it got there, but does not disturb her.

Wanda would want the Widow near, he thinks.

**v.**

Once, when Latveria was the Former Yugoslav Republic of Sokovia, Mamă told them a story of further back, when Sokovia was Yugoslavia, new-made from the filth and ashes of the Eastern Bloc, of Soviet Russia.

Mamă's stories always rang with death knells and stank of blood, just as this cavernous hall which seems like to become Wanda's mausoleum rings like a heavy iron bell and stinks of iron and copper.

**vi.**

"If I may?" Banner says, and Pietro shifts just enough to the side to let the doctor in. Banner has sensible, blunt hands, clean because dirt simply seems to lose its way from Hulk to human, and Pietro watches those simple hands as they seek to work a miracle.

"Sergeant Barnes," Banner calls over his shoulder. "What kind of bullet was that?"

Barnes' smile is a lethal thing, as charming as it is unnerving, and Pietro shivers to see it.

"Hell if I know, Doc," he says, "but it sure as shit did it's job, right?"

Barnes' cold grey-blue eyes turn to Pietro, and his tongue turns to the liquid growl of Moscow gutter Russian he speaks with the fluency of a native son, which makes no sense coming from an American soldier with the haircut of a silver screen heart-throb of yesteryear. 

"The Witch is dead," he says, mouth smooth even on harsh sounds, "but your sister won't be."

**vii.**

Wanda jerks awake, seizes Pietro's hand, turns her face into the Widow's touch.

"Oh," she says, and then begins to laugh. 

And then her eyes roll back in her head, and she is gone - but alive, her pulse ticking visibly under the stretched-thin skin of her neck.

**viii.**

"I think that maybe she is the Witch, now," the Widow says, stroking Wanda's hair as they wait for the approaching ambulance. "I think that maybe, she was the Witch all along."

Pietro would argue with that, except - has Wanda not always been exceptional? Has she not always been furious, right down deep?

Perhaps the Witch only uses the tools already available. Perhaps the Witch was no true witch at all.

**ix.**

"Pietro," Wanda says, awake now, the words sliding from her mind into the space behind his ears. Sometimes, when she is tired or he is too far to hear a whisper, she bypasses his ears altogether, but this is more weariness than tiredness, more safety than care. "What did I do?"

"It was all the Witch," he promises her, swaying with the ambulance as it rounds rubble here and monsters there. "It was not at all you."

"It was mostly the Witch," the Widow says. "It was not all you."

Wanda closes her eyes, easing into sleep where before she sank into unconsciousness. Pietro wonders why the Widow's words were more comforting than his own, and decides it does not matter.

**x.**

"I am guilty of her crimes," Wanda says, "because she was me, for the time she was with me."

"I don't know about that," Fury says, leaning hard over the end of Wanda's bed, "but a lot of very important people agree with you."

"She is innocent," Pietro says, and grins when Fury looks his way. "Well, mostly."

**xi.**

"More missions," Rogers says, "for more years off."

Wanda, returned now to her orange jumpsuit, is sitting with her arm pressed to the Widow's, both of them lit by a stray sunbeam daring to cross the wall into their closed-off yard. In the light, the Widow's hair is the same golden-red as Wanda's magic, and Pietro thinks  _ ah, fitting. _

"How many more years?" Stark asks, obnoxious in gold-framed sunglasses he bribed from someone or other. 

Rogers gives him a scowl, the special scowl he has reserved for Stark, but behind him, Barnes is grinning.

"How many years ya got, kid?" Barnes says, and Pietro cannot help but smile. 

Perhaps being part of this  _ suicide squad  _ will not be so bad, now that Wanda is no longer in danger, and Barnes has learned to smile without a gun in his hand.

   



End file.
